Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome all of our guests. It is very good to have them here. I joined the meeting about half an hour ago. I missed the first part. I apologise if this question has already been asked. I will build on a contribution I made last week when I spoke about my experience in the Netherlands several years ago. I saw many more people with disabilities in the Netherlands and I wondered why that was. I stayed with a person who was severely physically disabled while I was over there and it got me thinking about why I saw more people with disabilities in the Netherlands. Coming from a background of campaigning in respect of transport, which was my path to politics, I knew the Dutch had very good walking and cycling infrastructure. That is often seen as infrastructure for able-bodied people ,but it was pointed out to me that it can work very well for people who do not have the same physical ability as me. This really good infrastructure the Dutch do, which is ostensibly for walking and cycling, can be very important for people with mobility difficulties because you can use wheelchairs or whatever mobility device with this infrastructure. If you do not have it, it is much more difficult to get around if you depend on those kinds of devices.

I acknowledge that there is a difficulty, particularly with the section of the community who are visually impaired. There are challenges with respect to enabling cycling infrastructure, while also protecting the safety of people who are visually impaired. I would like to hear the views of our guests on what we call active travel infrastructure, which is walking and cycling networks, their thoughts on the infrastructure and its importance to them. One reason I mention this is because, since I was on that trip to the Netherlands six or seven years ago, I have not heard advocates from the disability community voicing their desire for this kind of infrastructure. That could be down to me because I only became a member of the committee recently. It may be that I am not tuned to the voices of the community. I would like to hear the thoughts of our guests. If there is advocacy in this area, will they point me towards it?